Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: How do I cope with other people putting their expectations on how soon I should be getting dates? Some of my friends act as if getting dates is as easy as going to buy something at the grocery store. It bothers me. It’s not that easy from my experience.

In the last year, I started rock climbing. I met a lot of people at the climbing gym. Most of them were other men. The few women I met were not single. As I have learned reading this blog, expanding my social circle is a good step towards improving my dating life. I still decided to occasionally checkout other climbing gyms with a more balanced gender ratio.

I also started yoga 8 or 9 weeks ago. I have not had any meaningful conversations with anybody there yet. I know the stereotypes about the guy who goes to yoga classes to do approaches. Even though I genuinely enjoy yoga, I assume some people in the class could have suspicions about my true intentions. So I keep to myself, at least for now.

I think getting dates could be easier if I had a bigger and more diverse social circle. I am thus doing what I can to expand my social circle with hobbies. It will take a long time to get there, but it’s the only solution I can see. I tried getting results “fast” by doing “night game” and “day game”. “Pick up” was a fun challenge, but I don’t think that’s how humans are meant to create bonds and develop relationships.

Most people in my life can’t relate to the challenges I am facing. It’s frustrating. None of them tried pick up and realised it’s not the real solution. None of them tried expanding their social circle to improve their dating life. Some of them met their significant other in school when having a diverse social circle was a given. And yet, they talk to me as if getting dates should be easy. I think it’s a case of the hot hand fallacy. They met someone largely because of luck and favourable circumstances they did not intentionally create. But they give advice as if their success was largely from competence. I don’t have those favourable circumstances and have to create them from scratch, which takes time. I give them credit for taking action on the opportunities they had. However, creating the opportunities themselves is a different ball game.

I am open to being wrong. Maybe it should be easy to get dates now and not wait as my social circle expands. I just want peace of mind.

Taking My Time

DEAR TAKING MY TIME: This is a matter of crossed wires, TMT, because while I understand what you’re saying and you’re not entirely wrong, I think you’re missing a few important parts of the process. And more to the point, I’m kind of wondering if maybe there’s something else going on here.

Let’s start with the obvious part: I think you’re projecting some of your frustration on your friends and misunderstanding things. You’re correct that, yes, meeting people is often a matter of luck and favorable circumstance. What you’re missing is that luck isn’t random, nor are favorable circumstances a matter of pure chance.

This is going to sound like something of a random digression but stick with me for a second. I’ve been re-reading one of my favorite book series from my childhood lately: the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. In the fourth book, Taran Wanderer, the eponymous lead – a foundling raised by the sage Dallben – goes off to try to learn about his family, in part because he hopes to discover he might be nobility and thus able to woo and wed his friend, the princess Eilonwy.

One of the people he meets over the course of his journey, is Llonio, a man who seems to have the most extraordinary luck. He built a paddock without livestock and then meets Taran, who is leading a herd of sheep after the death of their shepherd. If Llonio stumbles over a rock in his field, it turns out to be perfect for turning into a mill to grind grain. Random plants seem to be precisely what he needs at any particular moment, bits of cloth or leather end up being perfect for some task at hand… it seems like Llonio leads an unusually charmed life.

Except… he doesn’t. It’s not that Llonio is especially lucky. The secret to his luck is, simply, that he is always on the lookout, always ready to make use of what he finds and simply knows how to apply his knowledge and skill to make the most of anything he encounters. He’s not lucky so much as he’s prepared, observant and ready to take advantage of what opportunities are presented to him.

That’s the thing about luck: it tends to happen most often to people who are on the lookout for it. The luckiest folks are the people who put themselves into fortune’s path and are prepared to make the most of the opportunities when they find them.

I’m a living example of this. I’ve had a number of extraordinary opportunities in my life, met some incredible people and had a whole host of absurd and wonderful adventures… and from the distance it can look like luck. But most of it was simply a matter of making my own luck. I got jobs, even a position on a very popular podcast, because I decided to start going to a regular meetup for people who wanted to hang out and draw. From there, I made friends, who introduced me to other friends that I also befriended, and that network meant that when opportunities came around, they decided to offer those opportunities to me, because they knew me and thought “hey, I should tell Harris about this” or “he’d be a good fit for this.” Was this luck? Sure… but it was luck that happened because I laid groundwork to be lucky. It may not have been my intent, but I was in the right place at the right time because I had put myself there.

Hell, the same thing applies to my love life. I met the woman who ultimately led to my becoming Dr. NerdLove because I chose to go out to an event that I thought might be fun and where I might meet some folks. And I did… including a young woman who was quietly sketching Death from Sandman. That gave me an opening to say “hi” and get to know her. That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t chosen to go out and see what happened.  Hell, I met the woman who would eventually become Dr. Mrs. The NerdLove by random chance, but we became friends because I offered her my seat and we made small talk and realized we had a lot of interests in common. Random probability put us in the same room, but it was my taking action that started the relationship.

The point of all of this is to say that while it’s true that your friends may have met their partners through luck and circumstance, it wasn’t just a roll of the dice. It’s not as though their partners crashed through the ceiling into their living rooms or got hurled through a window at them. They got lucky – as it were – because they put themselves in the position to get lucky and when the opportunity arose, they took their shot. Some shots miss, but, as The Great One has said: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

That’s the thing about most PUA tactics like “day game” and the rest: most of it is ultimately just taking a shotgun approach: throw enough lead out and you’ll hit something. They’re taking shots and playing the odds. They’re playing them badly, in a way that’s profoundly inefficient at best, and if they succeed, it’s usually despite themselves… but they are playing.    

Which brings me to my second point: you’re not getting lucky because you’re not actually creating those opportunities or circumstances. You think you’re laying the groundwork, but what I’m seeing is mostly a lot of cat-hoovering. It’s a little like an author who keeps doing ‘research’ for the book they want to write, or a screenwriter who keeps making vision boards and reading Story and Save The Cat, but never actually puts words on the page. It feels like progress, but it’s really just spinning your wheels.

You talk about trying to build these social circles and meeting people, but I can’t help but notice what you’re not doing: you’re not asking people out. Hell, you’re not even talking to some people. You’ve been going to your yoga classes for months at this point but haven’t even so much as said “hello”. Yeah, there’re dudes who go to yoga simply to hit on women, but there’s a vast difference between the guy who thinks the yoga studio is a sex ATM and making small talk with the other attendees. Nobody’s going to think it’s weird if one of the regulars actually, y’know, makes an effort to say hi and make friends. Nor, for that matter, are they going to think you’re being a creep if you talk to someone and say “hey, I’m really enjoying talking to you; is it cool if I add you on WhatsApp?”

People’ll have their guard up if you roll around the room like a horny shark, chatting up the ladies and only the ladies. A guy who’s being social and friendly and getting to know folks is just someone who’s trying to make friends.

Part of the point of talking with people at these is to make friends and foster those friendships. As you do, and they get to know you and you get to know them, there’ll be more opportunities for fortune to strike. They may know of an opening in their company when you need a job. Or they may be throwing a party and invite you… where you very well may meet someone incredible. But none of that can happen unless you actually start taking direct action, not just endless rounds of “laying the groundwork” or “Creating the circumstances”. There have been a multitude of opportunities that’ve passed you by because you were too busy looking at the wrong thing.

The benefit of playing the long game is giving people the opportunity to get to know you, connect with you and appreciate your uniqueness. You’re not playing the long game if you don’t actually play.  

And honestly, I kind of wonder if you’re not taking those opportunities because you’re afraid to take your shot. It sounds like you’re trying to avoid rejection or embarrassment more than actually meeting people, and that’s never going to work. Getting lucky requires action to go with the preparation. You don’t need to wait until you think you’ve got the perfect moment, and you definitely don’t want to wait until you think there’s a 100% chance of success. No amount of luck comes without risk; part of getting lucky is to look for moments when the odds are more in your favor than not… even if it’s only a 49/51 split.

If you are chatting with someone, catch a vibe and say “hey, I’m doing $COOL_THING next week, and I think you’d really enjoy it. Would you care to go with me?”, nobody is going to think you’re being a sex pest, doubly so if you take “No, thank you” or “I’m busy” with good grace and just continue to be friendly and social.  This is the most normal and organic way of meeting people, and I can guarantee that it’s how your friends met the majority of their partners.

Similarly, you aren’t going to be getting lucky if you don’t create opportunities for other people help you get lucky. Your friends can’t say “hey, I know someone you should meet” if they don’t know you’re single and looking, any more than they can offer you a job if they don’t know you’re on the market for one. They can’t invite you to do stuff if they don’t know you want to hang out with them. You have to play your part in this.

I think you’re well past the point of “creating favorable opportunities” and into procrastination. It’s not an either/or situation; you can take action and put yourself in fortune’s path at the same time. But none of it can start until you stop “preparing” and start doing. Until then… you’re just going to be missing shots because you never even tried to take them in the first place.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: With the new year just beginning, I’d like to really push through the chest beating and knee shaking that comes with approaching women. I’ve become FAR better at it but now I’m trying to graduate from “being good at conversation and connecting” to “actually flirting and being sexual.”

Progress has been slow. It’s that damned approach anxiety, mainly in new spaces or semi-public ones like bars, conventions, events etc. Don’t get me wrong, I think I’ve become rather good at connecting with people and can genuinely charm people when I’m putting all my effort into it.

BUT…. Now I need to advance beyond “cool stranger” and into “I wanna f--k/date this guy.”

I did some practice at a party and bumbled my way into making some chick think I pee’d in her pool. I was the first one in, so I jokingly said I “christened it” completely oblivious to the implications. After seeing the reactions of “uhhh, what did he just say” on their faces I ran away, not wanting to correct myself or clarify out of sheer embarrassment. This was after forcing myself to change walking direction towards her and another girl without any plan of action. I was feeling the chest beats and knee shakes and thought “alright time to work through it.”

I guess my question is if there is any easier way to fight through those chest beating and knee shaky feelings on the approach. And if I should just keep doing it until the feeling goes away or I can deal with it better. I’m gonna feel this at every step of the dating/sex process, so I want some help with better navigating it.

Panic Attack! At The Disco!

DEAR PANIC ATTACK! AT THE DISCO!: One of the issues that people often misunderstand or don’t fully get is how much of approach anxiety and fear of flirting or talking to people is that it’s not actually fear, so much as unfamiliarity. It’s the discomfort of doing something different or unusual and the worry of social opprobrium and inherent embarrassment for making a mistake out of ignorance.  

If you get right down to it, it’s honestly the same feeling of not knowing the proper etiquette at a fancy party and that you’re going to mark yourself off as an ignorant, classless boor because you don’t know which fork to use or brought the wrong gift to the host and hostess and now you can expect to be in exile for the rest of the social season.

This is part of why your heart pounds and your knees get weak; you are painfully aware of what you don’t know, and the anxiety is more about the feeling of shame that could result. Intellectually, you know that you can survive embarrassment… but emotionally, the potential of it can be terrifying. You’re ultimately afraid of how you might feel.

The problem is that this feeling gets in the way of the very thing that makes the feeling go away. The cure to unfamiliarity is experience – doing the thing, risking making mistakes, learning from those mistakes and gaining a deeper understanding of how it all works. This is true for everything from being the new kid in school to approaching that sexy somebody at the party: the more you do it, the more confident you become, in no small part because you’ve been here before and you know the territory.

But those physical symptoms – the sweaty palms, the dry mouth, the racing heartbeat and adrenaline dumped into your system – are so incredibly uncomfortable that we often end up avoiding anything that might make us feel that way. And if we let that avoidance continue, it grows; soon we start to avoid things that make us even think of the things that cause those feelings. Do this for long enough and the world you allow yourself to live in gets smaller and smaller.

Now, there’re a lot of ways to try to manage those feelings; controlling your breathing, for example, forces your heart rate to slow, which calms you down. But at the end of the day, the only true cure for that feeling is experience, and that means that everything comes down to the mantra of “be afraid… but do it anyway.”

Now here’s the thing: we’re bad at understanding how we feel or why. We feel the physical sensations and then decide what they mean based on context clues around us. So when we feel physical sensations of excitement – and fear is a form of excitement – our brain casts around for reasons. This is why, for example, we talk about the Three Second Rule – you have three seconds after seeing someone before you have to go over and start talking to them. The point is to push past the physical sensations and not give your brain time to decide that you’re afraid; by the time it’s had the chance to say “oh no, you’re anxious”, you’re already in the mix and saying hello. So now your brain has to decide whether you’re afraid… or excited. This, in turn, builds up familiarity and experience and makes the entire process far less terrifying.

The same goes for making mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone, at some point, shoves their foot so deeply in their mouth that their shoelaces start tickling their intestines. The key isn’t to not make mistakes but to be able to recover from them. This, too, is a matter of practice and experience. Comedians like Conan O’Brian and others famously would go out and deliberately bomb on stage, precisely so that they could learn how to recover from it. Without experience, dying on stage can feel a lot like, well, actually dying. But when you know you can pull out of that particular nose-dive and have, in fact, done so, that feeling loses its power over you. Yeah, it can still suck… but you know damn good and well that not only is recovery possible, but you’ve done it.

I mean, I’ve had times where I have literally choked – as in, I aspirated on my own saliva – when trying to approach some attractive women. The key is that when this happened, instead of panicking, I took a second, said “hold on, let me do that again”, backed up and then approached them again like I hadn’t just sputtered and hacked like a cat with a hairball in front of them. And it worked. But this wouldn’t have been as possible if I hadn’t forced myself to not run away when I’d made other mistakes previously. Knowing through experience that I could do this, that mistakes weren’t fatal, and that embarrassment is temporary at best, meant that I knew I could manage things here too.

This is why the ultimate answer is to just push past the panic, to resist the urge to flee and proceed. Let your knees shake. Let your heart race. But keep at it. In time, with experience, you’ll learn that even some of the most incredibly awkward or embarrassing moments can become things that are funny or even endearing, becoming stories you tell about yourself instead of things you try to shove down a memory hole that end up haunting you at 4 AM.

And as a sidenote: many times the answer to “they think I’ve done this incredibly embarrassing thing” is agree-and-amplify, turning it into something absurd that nobody would seriously believe. “I’m sorry, in my culture, being the first one to urinate in the pool is a great honor, one that people fight for the right to do…” If you can get a laugh, then that moment ceases to be awkward and becomes one where you’re all laughing at the ridiculousness of thinking that’s what you meant… and they’ll be laughing with you, rather than at you. 

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I don’t know if this is a question as much as my not knowing how to feel or what to do but here goes: 

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel motivated to date or meet people or do anything right now. On TV, I’m watching the fires in Los Angeles and hearing from friends of mine who’ve had to evacuate and won’t know if they have a place to live when they get back or how they’ll pay for anything if they have to replace it. I live in a medium-sized city that’s a blue-ish dot in a big red state and my LGBTQIA2S+ are fleeing for safer places to live. It’s hard to feel like there’s a point to anything when it seems like the worst people are in charge and all the good people are getting ground under the boot. Jobs are hard to find and the ones that exist are all app gig crap that pay nothing and offer no security or benefits, nobody can afford medical care or find a place to live that’s even halfway affordable.

To make matters worse, I’m actually doing well. I just got a promotion at work that came with a nice raise that means I may actually pay off my college loans a lot sooner than I thought, my side hustle seems to be on the verge of taking off and I’m in the best shape of my life. 2025 honestly looks like it’s going to be one of my best years ever. But if I stop and think about it for a minute, I feel bad because I feel good? It feels like I’m doing something wrong when my life is OK, even doing well, while everyone else is suffering. 

I feel guilty about my good luck, like it comes from other people having to be miserable and I don’t know what to do with this. Now I feel like there’s no point to trying to meet someone because the world’s ending but also like I’m in a better position to meet my future spouse but it’s wrong for me to be happy at the expense for everyone else so my being happy makes me a bad person. 

I don’t know what to do here. And before you ask, yes, I’m in therapy. 

What do I do?

Best of Times, Worst of Times

DEAR BEST OF TIMES, WORST OF TIMES: You’re not the only person who feels this way, BTWT. In fact, there’re a lot of folks �– not just chuds and Nazi-wannabes that think they’re in ascendence, but everyday normal people – who feel conflicted because… well, life’s a little better for them than they expected. Not that they don’t face the same challenges everyone is experiencing, but in general their life is doing ok despite it all. And that’s an important distinction: despite it, not because of it. The cognitive dissonance of it all means that they’re honestly unsure how to feel and many of them are feeling guilty because they’re not suffering.

And honestly, this isn’t exactly surprising. People often discover, even in the depths of grief and mourning, that they feel… ok. In fact, there’re days where they feel surprisingly good, even while they’re grieving the loss of someone they loved. It’s incredibly common and incredibly human; we simply don’t have the capacity to be miserable forever. But we often feel weird when this happens, like it means that our grief isn’t real enough or that our not being sad means that we don’t care as much as we should. In reality, it’s simply a matter of how humans are almost infinitely adaptable to circumstance.

Life stubbornly insists on continuing, regardless of what else is going on. I’m reminded of a quote from Leverage creator John Rogers: “Yet another evening I close my eyes, pinch the bridge of my nose, take two short sharp breaths and remind myself millions of people led satisfying, meaningful lives during the fall of the Roman Empire.” It may not be comfortable, it may not be the life we hoped for but life, as it always does, finds a way.

I have a personal theory that a lot of this ties back to the fundamentally Calvinist beliefs that the US was founded on; the idea that suffering is inherently noble, and joy is an indulgent luxury when it’s not an actual sin and turning away from or trying to mitigate misery is somehow weakness and a betrayal. In fact, as I write this, I’ve been seeing a member of The Lincoln Project excoriating progressives who’ve chosen to ignore Trump’s inauguration as cowards and that “bearing witness to history” is a requirement because… reasons. It’s not exactly clear.

Neither, for that matter, how this sort of performative self-flagellation is supposed to help or make a meaningful difference to the people who are going to be harmed by the policies the incoming administration has been pushing. At best, it feels like a way of dismissing feelings of responsibility to do something by making “I feel bad about it” equivalent to political organizing or volunteering to help the people who are currently under threat. And this ultimately does nothing to help anyone. It’s misery for misery’s sake. 

There’re two things that I think will be important for you and folks who feel the way you do.

The first is simple: the cure for feeling helpless and despair is action. Despair holds you in place. It leaves you paralyzed, unable to move or take decisive action because what’s the point? It’s all over before it began and any attempt to do anything about it has all the efficacy of spitting into a hurricane or yelling at the tides to stop. Action is the antithesis of despair; it is staring despair directly in the face and spitting in its eye. It may be an act of futile defiance but it’s still an act. It says that everything may be hopeless, and the best you can do is hold back the dark for a little bit longer… but sometimes holding back the dark just a little longer is precisely what makes a difference. Sometimes it really is a matter of resisting the siege until the dawn – not when forces come riding over the hill to our rescue, but simply holding back the tide until we all regroup and push the dark back again.

It may feel like a Sisyphean task, but sometimes the act of rolling that rock up the hill is more important than debating whether you’ll ever reach the top. Even if you know the result is failure, there’s value in staring those forces down, bruised, bloody and broken and declaring “I can do this all day”.

If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

This is also part of the cure for the guilt you’re feeling. Think of this as the Tao of Peter Parker: with great power comes great responsibility. If life is going well for you and you’re in a better position than you expected, then one of the best things you can do is use your fortune to help others who are less fortunate. Rather than lamenting your success and feeling like it comes at the expense of others, reach out and put some of that largess into pulling others out of the depths. You know how Mr. Rogers famously said “look for the helpers?” He was talking about people like you: you’re the helper and your time is now.

There’s always a way to help and to take action, in ways both large and small, directly and indirectly. Make a recurring monthly donation to the aid agencies on the ground who are helping the people who are being hurt. Pick a cause and volunteer your time and resources. There are almost certainly organizations in your area helping immigrants under threat of deportation, LGBTQ people who need support or aid, reproductive health care, feeding and sheltering the homeless, taking care of the pets that’ve been abandoned or separated from their owners by the LA wildfires.

You can also find political organizations and causes too. We tend to get so hyper focused on state and national political races that we forget just how important city, county and municipal races can be. Join your local schoolboard and resist the forces demanding censorship and terrorizing queer, trans and gender non-conforming children. Volunteer at your local library and help keep those invaluable resources up and running. Hell, coaching Little League or kids’ sports teams and being a mentor to kids – especially ones who are under threat – can mean the world.

You can help individuals as well; if you have contacts in the states where your queer and trans friends are going who can help them find jobs or housing, give them a heads up and share that information with your friends. If you’ve got cash to spare, helping them defray the inevitable costs and emergencies can be a godsend. Even if all you manage is to help one person, you’ve made a much bigger difference. There’s a reason why the Talmud states “whomever saves one life, saves the world entire”.

And the act of helping, where you can and how you can, helps others find the strength to help as well. It’s like the sage said: “There’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

But the other thing you have to realize is that joy isn’t a luxury, it’s part of what gives us the strength to keep going. There is always a need for the things that lift our spirits, that bring even a moment of relief or eases our burdens for a short period of time. Finding those little nuggets of joy give us things to live for and reminds us that there is light, even in the worst days. Even at the height of the Nazis’ power, people found community and happiness, celebrated together, danced and sang and reminded themselves that there was still good in the world. Even under the worst oppression of the Khmer Rogue, the Stasi or any force you care to think of, there were still songs, there was still music, there were still stories and love.

These may be very small things, but the biggest things are made of small ones. Even a blade of grass in the wasteland can give hope; a flower in the rubble reminds us that life finds a way and goes on. Every person who find the strength to keep going is helping to keep the darkness from engulfing everything.

Similarly, harming yourself or making yourself feel miserable for misery’s sake doesn’t benefit anyone; it only saps your strength and resolve and makes it that much harder to get back up when you’ve been knocked down.

If reading about people’s misery on social media becomes too much, you can take a break. You can give yourself permission to stop doomscrolling or to not pay constant attention to the news; perpetually sandpapering your soul only serves to leave you exhausted and weak. You are allowed – some would say required – to not waste your strength and well-being on pointless misery, especially performative misery.

We’re entering an incredibly turbulent period of history, and it’s impossible to know how it’s going to shake out. We know it’s going to be rough and it’s going to be roughest on the most vulnerable among us. That makes that that much more important to not give into despair, to reach out with aid and shelter and to not just find joy but to share it so that others can find strength and solace in it as well.

When we’re facing the darkest night, that’s the time for us to remember that hope shines bright.

All will be well.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com